Don't execute Hank Skinner before crucial DNA evidence is tested

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Updated 7:08 pm, Wednesday, November 2, 2011

In March of last year, we urged that a Texas prisoner's execution, due to take place a few days later, be delayed until DNA evidence could be tested. We reasoned that since the evidence could be critical in establishing guilt or innocence, it would be unjust to execute him before it could be evaluated.

That prisoner, Hank Skinner, was convicted in 1995 for the brutal murders of his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons. He has consistently protested his innocence, claiming he was incapacitated by drugs and alcohol at the time. (Blood tests showed a level of codeine and alcohol in his blood that would leave most people comatose.)

Skinner received an eleventh-hour stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, which allowed him to pursue a federal civil rights suit asking for court-ordered testing of that DNA evidence, and sent his case back to the federal court.

But this July, even while that case was pending, and even though a new Texas law expanding access to DNA testing had already been passed and was due to take effect Sept. 1, the state asked for, and received, a new execution date for Skinner. That date is next Wednesday, Nov. 9.

So now we find ourselves, yet again, asking why the state of Texas is in such a hurry to execute Skinner even as two separate courts - either one of which could order that access be provided - are considering the merits of his case.

The state has always held that because Skinner's attorneys declined to test all the evidence available in 1995, fearing it might incriminate their client, they could not later ask for it to be tested. But this new state law removes such obstacles.

The untested evidence becomes even more important in light of the fact that Skinner's attorneys failed to introduce evidence on another potential suspect, Busby's uncle, now dead, who had a history of violent crime, had stalked Busby, and behaved suspiciously after the crime. Untested items include a man's windbreaker, not belonging to Skinner, found beside the victim's body, stained with blood splatter, human hair and perspiration; swabs from a rape kit; two knives, one of them a likely murder weapon; and towels and clothing.

While we are aware of our state's reputation for its enthusiastic embrace of the death penalty, it is also a fact that most Texans, about 85 percent, according to a Scripps-Howard poll, believe in access to DNA testing, and that more than 80 percent of Americans believe in the reliability of such testing.

Among the many expressions of dismay at the continued refusal of Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to allow the testing, is a letter sent last week to those two officials, and to Gov. Rick Perry, by a group of current and former lawmakers and former judges and prosecutors.

"We implore you," they wrote, "to ... test the DNA evidence before moving forward with Mr. Skinner's execution," adding that a short delay "will be a small price to pay to maintain public confidence in Texas's criminal justice system."

We share their sentiments. Testing the evidence before the execution date is a win-win proposition for the state and for all Texans. Whether the results support the defense's case or the prosecution's, justice will have been served.